


Dean's Story

by defendt0pbunk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depression, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Self-Harm, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 21:46:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8118667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defendt0pbunk/pseuds/defendt0pbunk
Summary: a ficlet based on my old tumblr url. IF YOU'RE EASILY TRIGGERED PLEASE DON'T READ THIS.





	

**Author's Note:**

> One of my followers wrote this for me back when my tumblr url was towriteloveondeansarms. I just found it again and figured I'd post it for the sole purpose of not losing it again bc it's beautiful. It's written in Cas' POV. Enjoy!
> 
> The original story does not belong to me.

AC/DC is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside the 1967 Chevrolet Impala, He sits and sings, body stretched out in the front seat, his somber voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Led Zeppelin is his favorite. It hits me that he won’t see this skyline for several weeks, and Sam and I will be without him. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what he’d say if his story had an audience. He smiles. “Cherish your childhood. Because I never got one.”

I would rather write him a song, because songs don’t wait to resolve, and because classic rock means so much to him. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save him.

Dean is 20. When I meet him, Jack Daniels is fresh in his system. He hasn’t slept in 36 hours and he won’t for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. He has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray, only after the fifth time Charlie and Kevin asked. We ask Dean to come with us, to leave this broken night. He says he’ll go to rehab tomorrow, but he isn’t ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without him.

He has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. He has felt the touch of Djinn and Kitsune, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. His arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Seven hours after I meet him, he is feeling trapped, Meg and myself offering opposite ideas. Sam is asleep just down the hall, John’s been gone three weeks, hunting a huge nest of vampires in Chicago. The sun is rising. He drinks long from a bottle of Jack he stole from the store a few towns back, takes a razor blade from the table and locks himself in the dingy, smelling motel bathroom. He cuts himself, using the blade to write “FUCK UP” large across his left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names him too great a risk, and does not accept him. For the next five days, he is ours to love. We become his hospital and the possibility of healing fills the grungy motel room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be his church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet his needs, to write love on Dean’s arms.

He is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I’ve known, Sam compared his situation Johnny Cash or some Hollywood movie star. He owns attitude and crude humor beyond his 20 years, and when he tells me his story, he is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as he shares, even though I am just an Angel of The Lord. His life has been so dark, him growing up in the life of a hunter, yet there is some soft hope in his words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls approach him in bars and flirt with him, he likes it. I can see it in his charming smile and flushed cheeks. I think it’s God reminding him that people still think he’s attractive.

I’ve never walked this road, but I decide that if we’re going to run a five-day rehab, it’s not going be like the ones at the Health Centers you see on television. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too many Slurpee’s from the Seven Eleven down the block and way too many games of Poker. The Winchester’s taught some of my brother’s and sister’s how to play, let’s just say Dean’s kicking my ass.

Thursday night we traveled across the country to California. Dean sat along the shore with his pant legs rolled up as the salty ocean water lapped at his bare ankles. We were watching the sunset, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. The sky was all different shades of blues, and purples, and pinks mixing together. He loves the sky when it gets like that and he smiles when I point out just how the sun reflects off the water. 

He has a good seat, watching as the sky finally darkens. He looks up at the zillions upon zillion stars and I point out Orion’s belt. For the first time in a long time I heard Dean Winchester laugh. It was a good laugh, like the kind of laugh that comes from deep with your stomach, just hearing that sound make me think that there is hope for him. On the way home, we stop for coffee and books, Slaughterhouse Five and While Mortals Sleep (Kurt Vonnegut; Dean loves his work)

On Saturday, there is a Carnival on the pier, all of us walk down from the hotel and spend the day together. We buy popcorn and cotton candy and ride the Ferris Wheel a few times because Dean said he loves to see California from up high. We go on it one more time as the sun begins to set. We make small talk as we sat side by side, Dean smiling constantly. The sun has almost disappeared under the water the chill of the wind from being up that high was making his cheeks turn a light shade of pink. As the lights from the rides and rain collide underneath us. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Dean, even though before he met me he wasn’t a huge believer in faith. This is his last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We’re talking to God but I think as much, we’re talking to Dean telling him he’s loved, saying he does not have to go alone. Two among us all know him best. Sam and I sit in the corner while he’s strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs, Dean’s inspired.

After church our motel room fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for him, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. He pulls me aside and tells me he would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded room, heading toward the door we reach the Impala and circle around to the trunk, he proceeds to open it.

He hands me his last razor blade, tells me it is the one he used to cut his arm and his last lines of cocaine five nights before. He’s had it with him ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and he shouldn’t have it. I hold it carefully between my fingers, thank him and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what God knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, he finishes: “Tell Sam i’m sorry.”

I have watched life come back to him, and it has been a privilege. When our time with him began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. The Book of Psalms, Chapter 147, verse 3 says: He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken man, treat him like a royal prince, give him the best seats in the house. Buy him coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell him something true when all he’s known are lies. Tell him God loves him. Tell him about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell him he was made to be whatever he wanted to be and that he didn’t have to follow in his Father’s footsteps. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave man. He is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of complete sadness but he is now trying to believe that God does exist and He does make things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. He would ask you to remember. 

And Dean would ask you to cherish your childhood, because you only get one.


End file.
